


nightvision

by a_good_soldier



Series: HANDLING EXPRESSIONS OF WINCHESTER EMOTION: A FIELD GUIDE (or: supernatural s12 codas) [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s12e09 First Blood, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 04:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9476633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_good_soldier/pseuds/a_good_soldier
Summary: sam and dean get home! sam and dean are still roughed up from their stint in a prison that doesn't officially exist! sam and dean share a bed (platonically)!





	

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to jared padalecki for that tremendous flinch as the door closed at the beginning of this ep, this fic truly would not have happened without you. obv spoilers for 12x09. rated T for language. title from the daft punk song.

They mutually decide on Sam bringing his mattress in to Dean’s room, without needing to articulate the reasons why. The memory of that suffocating silence,  _ nothing _ _,_ is still enough to make Sam shake.

Dean didn’t say it aloud, but Sam knows they’re both grateful to Cas for what he did. The possible ramifications are terrifying —  _ cosmic _ _,_ as though they hadn’t just dealt with the freakin’ sister of God — but Sam’s so fucking grateful he doesn’t have to go to sleep with loss boring another hole into him.

“Dibs on first shower,” Dean says, and Sam doesn’t even pretend that he’s going to be able to shower on his own. Cas and Mary are leaving them be, for now, but Sam knows they’re going to be on them about what happened tomorrow morning. He’s kind of excited to speak with another human being, actually.

But right now, one human is almost enough to be overwhelming. Dean goes to take his shower, and leaves the door open, just so they can both hear that the other one’s there. Sam putters around, debates changing into pajamas but doesn’t want to since he’ll just get them dirty, and in the end just sits there on the floor, listening to his brother wash his damn hair.

The memory of the prison creeps up on him — the memory of the Cage, too, the soul-shaking terror of being left alone in the cold there — and he shakes it off, focuses on the open door, the shadow of Dean toweling off his hair, brushing his teeth.

“Your turn, princess,” Dean says as he walks out.

“Yeah,” Sam grunts, just so he can say something, participate in a conversation with a  _ person _ _,_ and hops in the shower. Turns it on as hot as he can get, and shivers his way through it as the bone-deep cold works its way out of him. It feels like he hasn’t been warm since— since—

Well, if he can’t remember, so what. He turns off the water, and in the silence that remains, he suddenly realizes that maybe— that maybe he’s not— he opens the door fully, gasps out, “Dean?”

Dean looks up. “Wha—  _ Jesus _ _,_ Sam, put on a goddamn towel or something, fuck—”

“Sorry,” Sam says, wrapping a towel around his waist as he looks for a toothbrush. He brushes his teeth, and almost moans at how good Dean’s toothpaste tastes compared to the memory of the hardened, pre-packaged powder that came with the toothbrushes that were then confiscated every day. He spits out the toothpaste, and rinses his mouth, and says, “I just— I forgot you were there for a sec.”

He’s looking at himself in the mirror so he doesn’t have to look at Dean when he says it, but then Dean moves his bed over to make room for Sam’s mattress and he has to watch himself flinch at the sound. “You holdin’ up?” Dean asks.

“Yeah.” Sam gets out of the bathroom, boxers and a t-shirt. He was cold in prison, yeah, but he overheated too with those prison jumpers. He never realized how good it might feel to have fresh air on his legs, his arms. “You okay?”

Dean smiles. “When am I not?”

Sam rolls his eyes, and turns off the light. It’s funny, how that director or interrogator or whoever said they’d be left alone in the darkness, but that fluorescent light never turned off. It never went dark enough to actually sleep.

“Christ, I forgot about actual darkness,” Dean says from across the room. “Y’know I never thought I’d say this, but  _ fuck _ light.”

Sam laughs. “Yeah.” He falls into the mattress on the floor, looking up at the nothing around him, his eyes unused to darkness and unable to see even the faintest shadows. “Night, Dean.”

Dean mumbles out a response, and Sam lies back, waiting for sleep to take him.

Waiting.

And waiting.

It seems gradual, at first, but before he realizes it the feeling — the  _ crushing _ nothing — Lucifer’s voice, taunting him near the end, little hisses of words — it rises up in him, until he can’t breathe, he’s choking, he’s— no one’s here, no one’s here, no one’s  _ here _ —

“Sam!” Dean’s on the floor, somehow, next to Sam, hands on his shoulder. Christ,  _ hands _ . Human contact. “Sam, hey, hey, you’re okay, you’re okay—”

“He was there, Lucifer was there—” Sam’s breathing easier now, feels stupid for being so worked up. “Shit, sorry, fuck, I’m just—”

“It’s okay,” Dean says, all soothing like he was when they were kids, when he had to be a parent because John could barely stand to look at them for years after Mary died. “I— hey, come up here.”

“What?” Sam knows Dean can’t see it in the dark, but he throws an incredulous look his way just on principle. “Dean, we’re not gonna share a damn bed—”

“We are if I have anything to say about it. C’mon.” Dean hops up and pulls down the covers, and Sam’s eyes have adjusted just enough that he can see the space where he’d fit. “Better not kick me in your sleep, Gigantor.”

Sam swallows. He hasn’t told Dean about the Cage, or about Toni, but Dean seems to notice the way he reacts to the cold, the way he flinches at loud noises, the way he gets in his head when there’s no one around to keep him on Earth. In all honesty, this seems like a pretty good solution. “Kay,” he says, voice cracking. He climbs up onto the bed, and pulls the covers up over him, glad that Dean uses like five blankets to keep himself toasty warm.

“I’m serious,” Dean says, “no kicking.” His words are undermined by his hand on the upper half of Sam’s arm, a reassuring starburst of heat seeping under his skin.

“Yeah,” Sam promises, “no kicking.” It’s his way of saying thanks.


End file.
